All posts tagged gun control

When you hold a gun, you’re more likely to think someone else is also holding is a gun, a study finds, a bias with potentially deadly consequences. In one experiment, participants either held a reasonably realistic video-game gun or a foam ball. As photographs flashed on a screen of people holding guns or innocuous objects, test subjects lifted their arm if they saw a gun, lowered it if they didn’t. The groups made errors at similar rates, but the ones holding guns erred on the side of “gun present” while those holding a ball leaned toward “gun absent.” (Roughly the same bias occurred when people moved their arms down instead of up to signal seeing a firearm.)

Despite the political furor surrounding them, gun shows have little to no effect on murders or suicides in the places where they occur, a new study finds—at least in the weeks immediate following the shows. And the finding holds whether or not the gun shows conduct background checks.

Researchers looked at data involving 3,400 gun shows in in California and Texas, from 1994 to 2004. Those states were chosen not only for their size—they account for nearly 20% of all gun deaths in the United States—but also because they take opposite approaches to regulating gun shows: California demands background checks and a 10-day waiting period while Texas is essentially regulation-free

Researchers compared rates of gun-related and non-gun-related murders and suicides in the four weeks preceding a gun show to the rates in the four subsequent weeks. ZIP codes were the geographical unit examined, but the authors also ran checks 5 miles, 10 miles, and 25 miles from those ZIP codes. They found no spike in gun-related deaths in either state. …

Biographies

Gary Rosen is the editor of Review and the former managing editor of Commentary magazine. His articles and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. He is the author of "American Compact: James Madison and the Problem of Founding" and the editor of "The Right War? The Conservative Debate on Iraq."